


Nothing Like My Mother

by luvscharlie



Category: Flowers in the Attic - V. C. Andrews
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-04
Updated: 2014-04-04
Packaged: 2018-01-18 03:49:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 981
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1413979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luvscharlie/pseuds/luvscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cathy wants to be an independent woman; the exact opposite of the role model mother she has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nothing Like My Mother

**Title:** Nothing Like My Mother  
 **Author:** [](http://luvscharlie.livejournal.com/profile)[**luvscharlie**](http://luvscharlie.livejournal.com/)  
 **Fandom:** Flowers in the Attic  
 **Rating:** G  
 **Pairings:** Gen!Cathy Dollanganger  
 **Word Count:** 853  
 **Prompt:** 52\. Sorely Tempted  
 **Warnings:** The source material is filled with sibling incest, but there's nothing here that's in any way explicit.  
 **Author's Notes** Takes place during _Flowers in the Attic_. My first ficlet in this fandom. And I hate the voice I wrote it in. That being said, you have to start somewhere and once this got going, there was really no turning back. Written for [](http://writersrock.livejournal.com/profile)[**writersrock**](http://writersrock.livejournal.com/)'s prompt of "sorely tempted". Also, as I'm re-reading these books, I've come to realize I don't much like the voice of the source material either. Lots of exclamation points and juvenile thinking-- but I still love the books.

Two years, seven months, fourteen days, two hours and twenty-seven minutes since we came upstairs to live...

Every day I wonder what it's like to be someone who isn't me. I wonder what it's like to live in a world that includes more than a bedroom, a bathroom and an attic. A world with sunshine, and real flowers. The kind that die, rather than get taken down with the changing of the seasons. I'm not even sure I remember what it feels like to meet new people. How would I act? Would it be evident that I was so sheltered? That word, 'sheltered', it doesn't do my confinement justice-- but all the other words are too ugly and my mind is full of the ugliness all the time. Full of hate for people I should love without conditions.

Unconditional love. It is something I haven't believed in for a while now. Once so innocent and trusting. I don't even recognize that girl I used to be. Naive to the evils of the world. She was such an idiot, that girl-- believing the world was a good place full of good people. It's laughable now. Only I don't find much to laugh about these days.

I hate them. My mother. The grandmother. That grandfather in a bed downstairs who just won't die and set us free. I hate them all for keeping me here. A dancing ballerina kept always in her box. They've closed the lid. The music plays only in my mind. And I can't escape. I think about it sometimes. I think about stealing away with our little secret homemade wooden key and leaving everyone behind.

Even Chris.

And then I feel broken by the guilt. How can I even think of leaving him behind? Chris would never go without me. Not without the twins. But then, I've always known that he's the one who's filled with sunshine inside; he believes the best in everyone. He still believes Momma loves us and will make good on all her promises. For one so smart, my Christopher Doll is stupidly gullible concerning all things regarding our mother. My insides are full of doubts and gloom and rainy day skies. I don't even remember what it feels like for the rain to land on my skin. Our weekly trips onto the steep roof to soak up the sun are too dangerous to risk in the slippery wet of rainy days. I try really hard to remember the last time I walked in the rain, but that was another lifetime. Back then I was a little girl filled with hopes and dreams living in Gladstone, Pennsylvania with a mother and father who loved me. The dreams I have now are dark and filled with screams of "Devil's Spawn" and "Never should have been born".

And even filled with so much hate, there is still a small sliver of hope. Hope is a word I cling to. Hope that Momma will come back to us. Hope that the riches we were promised will be ours. Hope that we will ever leave this attic. But hope is beginning to die; day by interminable day it is slowly dying.

It is when they are all sleeping, my two brothers and tiny sister, that I think about escaping most of all. Sometimes I stand in the dark of our prison room and just stare at the door that keeps us from the rest of the world. I put the little key in my hand, feeling the rough wood as I grasp it, careful not to squeeze too tight and break it. If I broke it, they'd know. They would know my secret stamped down thoughts. They would know the shame in my heart. Know that my deepest desire is to run away and leave them. To be a normal girl who doesn't worry about small children who don't grow taller and grandmothers convinced they should never have been born. Back in Gladstone I never worried about any of those things. What I would give to turn back time and go back to that place.

I want to say it's my love for my siblings, Chris, Cory and Carrie, that stops me. That it is the good person inside of me who stays and doesn't abandon those who need me most. It is not. I will admit that only to myself, and only in the darkest part of night where I can't hide from my innermost feelings. No matter how ugly they are. I stay because I don't want to be like _her_. Momma went away and left us; she cared only about herself. And if I go, I am no better than she is. I hate her. I hate everything that she has become since my father died. She still looks like my mother, but I don't recognize the person who lives behind her eyes anymore.

And that's what makes me stay. Because the only thing worse than staying in this attic is the fear of turning into the thing I hate most of all in this world. My mother.


End file.
